“He asked me to read him the names of the students [who had been shot], and that is when he began to cry.” RICHARD CASTALDO’S FATHER

WHEN five bullets ripped into Richard Castaldo, he did the only thing he knew to survive – play dead.

The 17-year-old junior knew the gunmen who went on a rampage at Columbine HS were nearby – and he feared they might shoot him again.

“He closed his eyes because he knew they were near,” his father, Rick, said yesterday.

“He was playing dead so they wouldn’t shoot him anymore.

“He thinks he was on the ground for an hour with his eyes closed.”

Rescue workers managed to pluck Richard to safety and rush him to Swedish Medical Center. He is in serious condition with gunshot wounds in his chest and back.

His father, an engineer from Washington, is keeping a 24-hour vigil at his son’s bedside.

“I’m just amazed he is healthy because when I first saw him he had all these tubes going in and out of him,” Rick Castaldo said.

Seeing your son in such pain is hard, but the job of being a father got even harder when Richard – a breathing tube still down his throat – began asking questions.

His father said he bluntly told the boy about the massacre at the school. But Richard couldn’t understand why anyone would kill a dozen of his classmates and injure 23 others.

“He asked me to read him the names of the students, and that is when he began to cry,” said his father, trying to stay composed.

Richard will eventually recover after therapy.

But like the 1,800 other students, Richard is going to have to make a difficult and emotional decision.

Can he return to the school and walk in the hallways and the cafeteria and the library where his classmates were cut down.

Amid the prayer vigils, services, political speeches and media attention, a debate is raging in Littleton.

Should officials raze Columbine HS – to help this area forget the anguish of the carnage?

The debate began when the Larry Strutton, publisher of the Denver Rocky Mountain News, ran a front-page editorial.

“If students, teachers and parents feel there is no way they can return to the classrooms at Columbine, we [the paper] will lead the charge to raise funds to build a new school and urge legislators to help,” the editorial said.

Some think it’s a good idea. Others don’t.

Laura Vanderham, a 16-year-old sophomore who was in the cafeteria when the rampage started, is against it.

“It was horrible but a lot of kids need to go back in there and face it,” she said.

“If we don’t, we will never find any closure. It is not going to solve anything,” said Laura, whose friend Daniel Mauser, a 15-year-old sophomore, was killed.

Closure is hard.

The weary eyes of Rick Castaldo show the process is just beginning for him, his son – and many others.